Grave Concerns: How To Kick The Bucket Without Leaving A Footprint
“How much do you reckon this one costs?”
Weaving our way through the iconic Waverley Cemetery on the Bondi to Coogee walk, this became the burning question of the afternoon, a slightly more morbid version of “guess the house price”. With a few of my equally baby faced 21-year-old friends, it wasn’t exactly surprising that none of us had any idea how much a grave overlooking the sea would cost.
But maybe we should. In 40 years, Sydney will have all but run out of graves. You think it’s hard to live in Sydney? Try dying here.
It turns out at the graveyard we walked though in Waverley, the cheapest you’ll come across is a single bit of land for a plaque and your ashes in the garden bed will set you back $3300. And that’s just for 25 years. If you want to be there for 99 years, it’s $6 600. For a burial for more than 99 years, it’s over $50 000.
True, this is on the pricey side, even for Sydney cemeteries. But it’s a growing reality. The number of people dying each year is going to double in the next 40 years and the city doesn’t exactly have an abundance of free space for cemeteries. These pesky living people get priority for now. People are opting for cremations more and more, with around 65% of Sydneysiders turning down burials. But religious and cultural diversity will ensure that we need to keep finding space for burials for a long time to come. And once you take ethics into account, the question of what should happen to us as we die is becoming a serious concern.
So what do we do?
How would you feel about bulldozing a grave site? Or having a fresh dead body buried on top of you?
If that makes you feel a little uncomfortable, get used to it. Both are realities in Australia.
Although most people are unaware of it, the NSW government has already passed legislation which means you can buy a grave spot with a time limit for a cheaper price — a minimum of 25 years and a maximum of 99 years. This means that 25 years after being initially buried, your family needs to renew your burial place, otherwise you’ll be promptly dug up and placed in an ossuary box (a box for skeletal remains) and buried deeper to make way for your new dead roommate or moved to an ossuary house.
While renewing your grave like a parking ticket might take a little solemnity out of the whole dying thing, it’s a necessary part of a much bigger conversation.
Cremation — the ethical way forward?
With the cost of gravesites increasingly resembling inner-city Sydney house prices as space rapidly runs out, cremation seems like the obvious way forward. But if you want to take ethics into account, the decision isn’t so simple. While cremations take up less space, they also release a toxic cocktail of chemicals into the atmosphere. A cremation requires roughly 760–1150 degrees of heat for 75 minutes, which uses about 285 kiloWatts of gas and 15kWt of electricity to finally see the end of us — equivalent to the energy a single person uses domestically for an entire month. One last little fuck you to the environment on our way out. Meanwhile, the formaldehyde resin from the coffin material and embalming chemicals are tossed into the toxic cocktail of emissions, not to mention the mercury being pumped into the atmosphere from our teeth cavities. Turns out even death can’t save us from the plight of dentists.
The problem is, burying these chemicals is almost as bad — if not as immediate. Burial should return our remains to the food chain, but humans are rather good at slowing this process as much as possible — embalming before locking ourselves in expensive coffins and concrete vaults.
One way to avoid both is to opt for a natural burial in which you are buried in a cardboard coffin or merely in biodegradable cotton — returning your body to the earth with as few chemicals as possible. The graves are often unmarked and merely surveyed using GPS technology in bushland or parkland. While not yet a popular option, the Natural Burial Park in Kemp’s Creek offers this option.
Either way — burial or cremation — involves an environmental conundrum by either taking up too much space or contributing to pollution in the atmosphere.
But whether you want to be buried in a concrete vault undisturbed for eternity, share a grave with a roommate, go green and head to the bush or go up in flames, just do what you bloody want — after all, it’s probably the last choice you’ll ever make.
This article by Cameron Nicholls was originally published at The Vocal.
